Ellen O’Connell Whittet is an essayist and lecturer who teaches in the Writing Program at UC Santa Barbara. She is currently working on a memoir about ballet and the forces that control a woman’s body.

Ellen has written for Paris Review, Buzzfeed, New York City Ballet, Allure, Teen Vogue, The Rumpus, Lenny Letter, Bustle, Catapult, Literary Hub, Salon, Post Road, Prairie Schooner, where she won the Virginia Faulkner Award, Redivider, The Nashville Review, the Harper Perennial Anthology The Moment (2012), and is published monthly on the Ploughshares Blog. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.